


Playing Pretend

by mollymauks



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fake!Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Series, and probably a string of short 1-2k things, but it will mostly be a Jester/Molly thing, but it's SO SQUISHY, i played a little bit with the group dynamics in this, or that's the plan anyway, prompted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 14:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollymauks/pseuds/mollymauks
Summary: Prompted! Jester/Molly in a string of fake marriages in increasingly implausible situations. Hilarity ensues, and then 'oops we caught feelings' happens and more hilarity ensues when they try and deal with that. Five fake marriages and one real one is what we're going for here people.Teaser: Not quite sure what she was going to do, Jester hurried towards the three broad backs that were clustered around the bar and the walking disaster that was Mollyamuk Tealeaf.





	Playing Pretend

“The one on the left is going to punch him,” Yasha said, taking a swig of her ale as she did so, surveying the impending disaster on the other side of the bar with an air of mild concern.

“Nah,” Beau disagreed, shaking her head. “My money’s on the one on the right.”

“Really?” Nott chirped, eyes sparkling with sudden bright interest as she looked up from her whisky. “Uh, how _much_ money, exactly?” she asked, with a reasonable attempt at delicacy that was still utterly transparent.

Beau surveyed her over the rim of her own tankard for a long moment. Then with a characteristic shrug Jester had learned meant ‘what the fuck’ and typically preceded something she was going to have to fix with magic, she dug into a pouch on her belt and tossed two silver pieces onto the table.

Nott’s eyes widened even more at the sight of the silver and her long fingers twitched with anticipation, evidently longing to reach out and grab them up.

“I’ll take that,” she said eagerly, after a half a glance at Caleb, who smiled and nodded faintly, glancing up from his book, twitching her own two coins onto the table.

Fjord joined them a moment later with a clink, “I agree with Beau,” he growled, nodding towards her.

 Beau toasted him with her tankard before taking another long draught.

“Don’t you think that maybe we should stop this?” Caleb said, peering around Nott and looking towards the bar, too. He’d had his nose buried in a book a moment before, but the sound of coins clinking against the table had gotten his attention, and he too had now noticed the brewing _problem._

“Nope,” Beau said, grinning broadly at him.

“He could be hurt, you know,” Caleb pressed, “Those men don’t look particularly friendly.”

“Oh I’m counting on that,” Beau replied, her grin broadening, seemingly pleased by this observation. No doubt intensified by the fact she had already identified the men in question as quite a bit more than ‘not particularly friendly’.

“I’ll go get him out of trouble if things start getting nasty,” Yasha reassured Caleb.

 Beau pouted at this, but she seemed not to notice.

“I’m guessing you’ve done that a fair bit in your time together?” Beau said, smirking at Yasha.

Everything she said, whatever it was, always seemed to be laced with a flirtatious tone when it was directed at the tall barbarian woman. Yet as much as she flirted, Yasha seemed to be just as oblivious to it. Jester was pretty sure she would want to notice if she could, and had already started working on getting Molly to nudge Yasha into noticing her. He was being very... _Molly_ about it so far.

Yasha nodded in response to Beau’s question, looking tired, and a slight frown creasing between her brows. “More often than you’d imagine.”

“I’m imagining it happened pretty much every time the two of you went into a bar,” Fjord said, eyebrow raised.

Yasha considered this for a moment, then nodded again, “Then you’d be imagining right.”

“Don’t know why you bother, personally,” Beau said, taking another long gulp of her drink and eyeing Yasha over it, clearly not wanting her to leave the table now that she’d actually said more than two sentences right after each other. Which for Yasha was very impressive indeed.

“Molly’s okay,” Yasha quietly informed her drink.

In a group like this, Jester had noticed, Yasha was actually rather shy. She could have torn any of them apart with her bare hands, but didn’t seem very keen on looking at any of them. Mostly she talked to Molly, who made the effort to lean over to her and start up a quiet conversation just between the two of them if he felt she’d gone too long without speaking.

“He’s an ass,” Beau replied dismissively. Even her desire to get into Yasha’s good books couldn’t convince her to hold her tongue on the subject of Mollymauk.

Yasha smiled faintly at that, “He can be,” she conceded, “But he can be a good person, too.”

Beau snorted. “I must be missing that side of him.”

“Maybe you aren’t looking hard enough,” Jester suggested, propping herself up on her elbows and blinking across the table at Beau.

Beau at once groaned and looked between her and Yasha, “Not you, too!” she exclaimed irritably.

Jester grinned at her, “We’re tieflings!” she reminded Beau at once, wiggling her tail pointedly over one shoulder as she did so, “We have to look out for each other.”

“...You can still admit he’s an ass, though?” Beau said, hopefully, “He’s just an ass that looks like you so you look out for him? That’s not so bad.”

Jester mock-pouted at that, crossing her arms, “Are you saying I look like an ass?” she demanded indignantly.

“No, no!” Beau said, hurriedly, while Jester grinned wickedly at her.

Yasha was still watching the bar, her eyes slightly narrowed. After a moment, she sighed, interrupting the back and forth between Jester and Beau that the others had been watching with vague amusement. She set down her mug down without drinking from it and made to prise herself from her chair to intervene, looking resigned to it. “I better go save the idiot. There’ll be nothing but mincemeat left of him in a minute if he keeps that up.”

“I’ll go!” Jester said suddenly, pinging to her feet and apparently surprising everyone.

Yasha raised her eyebrows but conceded, settling back into her chair, “Be my guest,” she said.

Beau, winked at Jester in gratitude, and planted her feet in Yasha’s lap. Yasha blinked in surprise, but didn’t protest.

Not quite sure what she was going to do, Jester hurried towards the three broad backs that were clustered around the bar and the walking disaster that was Mollyamuk Tealeaf.

He had a deck of cards in his hand, flourishing them, showing off in that way he did, flicking them between his long, deft fingers in an obvious display of dexterity. They weren’t his usual tarot deck, but a normal one he used for simple cons and scams, making a few coins when he could. The cons were slick and well-done, and Molly was practiced with them, and a born liar and trickster.

There was just one problem with them.

He had the unfortunate habit of letting Beau choose his marks. She surveyed the room carefully, then pointed at the group she thought would both be the most difficult for him to successfully scam....Not to mention the most likely to knock Molly out when he inevitably pissed them off.

Tonight’s lot were a group of three hulking barbarians, each of which was standing facing Molly looking deeply unimpressed, arms folded, glowering in exactly the same way.

Taking a deep breath, Jester hastily inserted herself between them and Molly, who refused to pull back on a con, even when he knew it was going wrong, too busy being pissed off at Beau and determined to prove her wrong to see sense. Even if it cost him. And it did. Frequently. Jester had had to scoop him off the floor and heal him to get him back to consciousness twice in as many weeks. It didn’t matter how much she lectured him about it before, during, and afterwards, as soon as Beau smirked at him, he immediately forgot all of her complaints about his carelessness.

“There you are!” she exclaimed, turning to Molly with wide, warning, _don’t fuck this up you idiot, or I’m leaving you in the puddle of your own drool tonight to teach you a lesson_ eyes, trying to ignore the hulking figures behind her.

Seeing Molly about to open his big stupid mouth and say something equally big and stupid she leaned up on her toes, without really knowing what she was doing, and pressed a soft, chaste kiss to his lips to shut him up.

It worked, fortunately, and she spun around, looping her arm through his, pinching his side hard to keep him quiet as she blinked innocently up at the three goliaths leering down at the pair of them.

“Making friends, dear?”she asked, smiling sweetly up at Molly.

Molly, bless him, for all his faults, was able to roll with punches and improvise. He slapped a huge, beaming smile onto his annoyingly handsome face and gave her a little squeeze, “Of course, darling, you know me,” he purred, giving her forehead a little kiss.

 _Unfortunately_ she thought, wryly. She didn’t know how Yasha had put up with him and bailed him out so often. Though all the tall barbarian woman had to do was glower at someone to make them reconsider their actions.

Jester, however, hadn’t managed to perfect that death glare, yet, (she’d asked Yasha for lessons, but the other woman had just given her a thin smile then walked off) so she had to find other ways of defusing this situation.

“Thank you for finding my husband for me,” Jester said, beaming up at the goliaths, and hoping she wasn’t about to end up on the floor right beside him. She seized Molly’s arm firmly and tugged him towards her, “You don’t mind if I steal him away, I’m sure.”

Without pausing to give them the option of denying her, she yanked firmly on Molly’s arm and towed him away towards their table again. He paused a moment to swipe his cards from the bar, and give the men a last smile and wink, but, mercifully, allowed himself to be led away.

“Husband?” Molly said, raising his eyebrows at her.

Jester flushed slightly, only just fully realising what she’d done, “I was under pressure to stop you from getting killed!” she hissed at him as they sat back down at their table again.

Beau smirked at Molly and shoved a tankard of beer towards him. He caught it up smoothly and raised it to her in a grateful toast. The two of them confused Jester. She didn’t know whether they wanted to kill each other or kill everyone else together. She didn’t think they knew, either, which was perhaps more worrying.  

“I didn’t have a lot of options,” she continued, taking a big slurp of her own drink, “I just did whatever I could think of in the moment!” she pointed her tankard at him accusingly, “You should be _thanking_ me, not criticising me.”

“Wait, what did she do to get you out of that?” Fjord asked, eyebrow cocked, leaning forward.

Beau raised an eyebrow and Yasha, who still had Beau’s feet in her lap, cracked an eye open to peer at the two of them with apparent curiosity.

“Don’t you dare!” Jester burst out to Molly, glowering at him.

Molly, damn him, smirked around at the group, dragging out the moment, lapping up the effects that had been generated, playing to his audience.

“Well, it came as news to me,” he said, smiling and fluttering his fingers, “But it now seems that Jester and I-“

“No!” Jester squealed, punching him in the arm. But if punches had been able to stop Mollymauk they wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

“But we’re married now. Did we tie the knot the last time she revived me and in my elated haze I managed to forget it all?”

“You!” Jester shrieked at him, glaring at him and tossing a handful of peanuts at him in anger. “The next time you’re going to get killed by giant scary dudes I’m going to let them kill you! I won’t even shed a single tear, I mean it!”

Molly just smirked at her, not answering beyond taking another sip of his drink.

“And if you get wounds in battle, I’m just going to leave you there and let you bleed out,” she threatened him. “And I’m going to laugh while I do!” She told him.

Beau was snorting with laughter at this point, rocking back and forward in her seat, beer spurting out of her nose. Nott was giggling quietly, the hands pressed over her mouth doing nothing to suppress the sound. Even Caleb was smiling faintly, his fingers pressed to his lips.

Yasha, meanwhile, nodded to Jester at her glower and said, “That’s better.”

Molly smiled at Jester, his eyes twinkling, “I’d say I was _wounded_ , sweetling, but you did you just rush to my aid, so I’ll forgive you.” He finished his last drink and rose with a flourish of his silk cloak. He passed Jester on the way towards his room, and swooped down to press a soft kiss to the top of her head.

As he disappeared, Beau snorted, “I can’t believe you pretended to be married to _that_ ,” she sneered, nodding towards the disappearing hem of Molly’s cloak which was whipping up the stairs and out of sight.

“I only _pretended_ , “Jester insisted, “So he wouldn’t get himself killed by the huge dudes  you tried to make him scam, which means I’d have to pick up the pieces. _Again._ I would never _actually_ be married to him. Never, ever, _ever_.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! If you have a minute to drop a comment I will love u forever. Ta. (I had a bit of trouble getting Jester's voice, so any thoughts on her especially will be appreciated)
> 
> Come join me in my trashpit on tumblr (mollymauk-tealeafs) for Even More Molly.


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